Unstrapping a great coat from Patrick O’Hara’s saddle, he helped her into it and together they rode away.
And so it happened that on this day, only a few days before Christmas, the throngs along State Street viewed a second unusual sight. Though quite different from the first, it was no less mystifying. Who ever heard of a gray haired policeman and a bobbed haired girl in a policeman’s great coat, riding police horses and parading up the city’s most congested street in broad daylight?
“What a fool I’ve been,” the girl whispered to herself as she hid her face from a camera. “It will all be in the papers. And then what?”
They found young Patrick O’Hara nervously pacing his beat on foot. His face lit up with a broad grin as he saw them approaching.
“I sort of figured,” he drawled, “that whoever took Dick would bring him back. Can’t anybody do a good job of riding him except me.”
“If you think that,” exclaimed Tim Reilly, the elderly policeman, “you just take any horse on the force, give this girl and Dick a three-length start, and see if you’d catch ’em. You would—not! Not in a thousand moons!”
Patrick O’Hara grinned as he helped the girl down.
“Now you beat it,” said Tim in as stern a voice as he could command. “I suspect you work around here somewhere close. You’ve overdone your noon hour, and this the rush season. You’ll be in for it now.”
Cordie threw him one uncertain glance to discover whether or not he was in earnest. The next moment she went racing across the street.